Far Eastern Group (遠東集團) formed a strategic alliance with the Bank of Chongqing (重慶銀行) on Thursday to initiate a 4 billion yuan (US$585.8 million) five-year loan from the Chinese bank to the Taiwanese business group’s subsidiary in Chongqing, China, local newspapers reported yesterday.
Far Eastern chairman Douglas Hsu (徐旭東) inked a strategic alliance agreement in Chongqing with the bank’s president Gan Weimin (甘為民), both of whom vowed to further explore the possibility of banking cooperation, the Chinese-language Economic Daily News said.
FINANCIAL SERVICES
Gan said that the partnership represents his bank’s commitment to provide financial services to the Taiwanese group’s Chongqing-based subsidiaries, including Asia Cement Corp (亞泥), Far Eastern Department Stores Ltd (遠東百貨) and Pacific Sogo Department Store (太平洋崇光百貨).
In return, Far Eastern Group will increase investment in the Chinese city, Hsu was quoted by the report as saying, without providing an exact figure.
After it branches into Shanghai and Beijing, the Bank of Chongqing promises to provide full-range financial services to Far Eastern, the report said, adding that the bank planned to further tap into Taiwanese markets as the first bank from western China in the market after both governments give their blessings through a memorandum of understanding.
The Bank of Chongqing may further sell a stake to the group’s Far Eastern International Bank (遠東商銀), which may also release a stake in itself to the Chinese bank, the report quoted Gan as saying.
SHARE SALES
The Chinese-language Commercial Times yesterday also carried a similar report about cooperation between Far Eastern Group and the Bank of Chongqing. It said Far Eastern Bank may set up a branch in Chongqing and reported its plan to buy a stake in the Chinese lender.
The share sales will be subject to regulatory approvals from both sides, the newspaper said. Gan is slated to visit Taiwan on Monday for a 10-day trip, it said.
Far Eastern Bank, which plans to raise capital of NT$10 billion (US$308 million) through private placements, will talk with and target potential Chinese investors, the reports quoted anonymous bank executives as saying.
CHIP HANG-UP: Surging memorychip prices would deal a blow to smartphone sales this year, potentially hindering one of MediaTek’s biggest sources of revenue MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip designer, yesterday said its new artificial intelligence (AI) chips used in data centers are to account for 20 percent of its total revenue next year, as cloud service providers race to deploy AI infrastructure to meet voracious demand. MediaTek is believed to be developing tensor processing units for Google, which are used in AI applications. While it did not confirm such reports, MediaTek said its new application-specific IC (ASIC) business would be a new growth engine for the company. It again hiked its forecast for the addressable ASIC market to US$70 billion by 2028, compared
Motorists ride past a mural along a street in Varanasi, India, yesterday.
MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip supplier, yesterday said it plans to double investment in data center-related technologies, including advanced packaging and high-speed interconnect technologies, to broaden the new business’ customer and service portfolios. The chip designer is redirecting its resources to data centers, mainly designing application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) with artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities for cloud service providers. The data center business is forecast to lead growth in the next three years and become the company’s second-biggest revenue source, replacing chips used in smart devices, MediaTek president Joe Chen (陳冠州) told a media event in Taipei. “Three or four years
Until US President Donald Trump’s return a year ago, when the EU talked about cutting economic dependency on foreign powers — it was understood to mean China, but now Brussels has US tech in its sights. As Trump ramps up his threats — from strong-arming Europe on trade to pushing to seize Greenland — concern has grown that the unpredictable leader could, should he so wish, plunge the bloc into digital darkness. Since Trump’s Greenland climbdown, top officials have stepped up warnings that the EU is dangerously exposed to geopolitical shocks and must work toward strategic independence — in defense, energy and
RSS